This blog is intended to give anyone an opportunity to share their own experiances they may have had while serving on the USS Kitty Hawk CV-63 or for family that had someone serving on the Kitty Hawk during Dec. 11, 1973 or anytime, or if you wish to leave a comment about the website or the book project. Thanks for visiting, Edward Thomas Rieth

the 1 mmr fire will never leave my mind.Linn Shambers died in that fire because he took my duty so i could get into a card game.I know i cant change what happened.but it has changed my life forever.I tell him im sorry every night before bed.My life continued to go on.Im a father and grandfather thanks to him.

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Erik D. Reedy

2/14/2011 10:50:46 am

Ed,

This is the beginning to a great site (and a soon to be) great book. The fire aboard the Kitty Hawk needs to be addressed. The boys who endured these awful fires in the Pacific during the Vietnam conflict made today's Navy all of the more safer through team work and sacrifice. Through your book and others, such as Gregory A. Freeman's "Sailors to the End" (chronicalling the USS Forrestal's fire), guys like me can get an insight into what you guys went through. I am currently reading a book about the Frankin and her crew during WWII. What a tragedy.
Tonight, up in Bremerton, the Kitty Hawk lays in the dark...the boilers are cold, the hatches are sealed, but the old lady is still alive with the men (fallen and unfallen) who served aboard her. Your book and site will give that tragic day in 1973 the attention it deserves....as well as all of you who saved this wonderful ship from complete destruction. -Erik D.Reedy erikreedy@gmail.com

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David Schuelke

2/19/2011 02:54:18 am

I was P-1 Division 1MMR I was working on the feed pumps I went up to the engineering room to check some books for parts when I heard the file alarm my GQ station was in 1MMR I opened the door to the passage way only to find it full of smoke so I backed back into the engineering room looked around and found only a gas mask I put one on and tried to exit the door again I couldn’t see a thing and tried to hold my breath but couldn’t so I returned to the engineering room and laid on the floor hoping someone would find me there were no SSD's where I was only gas mask not sure how long I was in the room it was filling with smoke fast when someone with an OBA showed up and helped me out of there for the longest time afterward my throat and chest hurt. I would have been killed if I didn’t go look for a feed pump part.

I was standing watch in the port steering control motor room when the fire broke out. I was then told to proceed to my battery locker and to make as many wet-cell battery hand held lanterns as I could. Shortly afterward there were crewmates coming to the battery locker to pick up the lanterns. They told me no one could see hardly anything down there where the fire was burning, but they had seen dead bodies at the bottom of a latter going down into the engine room. I began making the lanterns as fast as I could and found my hands shaking badly, for the first time in my life, from the news of dead sailors on my ship. I heard my lanterns were a help in saving lives that night. I remember the Hawk spent the next 24 hours going in circles in the middle of the ocean, somewhere between Hawaii and The Phillipines, because the fire had burned a stearing control cable in two. It was an awful night and I am stll saddened by the loss of life of those brave men trying to fight that raging fire which was being fed constant fuel from a leaking pipeling and air from the ships ventilation system.

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Clyde Dodge

11/11/2014 07:38:17 am

I was in the oil lab at the time of this fire. Kevin Johnson was a friend of mine. We were transferring fuel that caused the fire. We had just been overhauled in Hunter Point Naval Shipyard just before this happened. The ship had been switched from black oil to a product called Navy distillate. The strainers put in the system were wrong. The chief engineer was aware of this before the fire. The screen was to small which caused the pressure to raise to high. Causing what is known as a hydro. To cover the problem we wold transfer to two separate tanks at once. Kevin opened the valve in # 1 mmr. Benny nuwannus (sp) was in charge of # 2 mmr. He would not let the man from the lab open the valve because he was doing routine maintenance in the space and deck plates had been removed. Lt. Pickering was pissed because we were running dangerously low on fuel in 1 mmr. He ordered the pumps started. The increased pressure caused the seal on the strainer to rupture and atomized the fuel. It hit a hot pipe and the fire was a huge blow torch.

I was serving as a Corpsman during this horrific event on board the Kitty Hawk. I was on watch in sick call when the medical spaces all filled with a pungent smoke. We tried to get to engine spaces for evac of any personnel but without success. Just to hot. It took us 3 days before we could get to the victims which were piled at the bottom of the ladder in the forward aux engine space. I helped in identifying the brave young sailors as they had been in the engine space for far to long. We treated as many as 60 sailors for burns and smoke inhalation. The event haunts me to this day. HM2 Thomas Noel ika Doc Noel